Across our desk this week came a widely-reported story about how the London Borough of Barnet’s outsourcing contract with Capita is succeeding to make savings and improve customer service.

The Institute has no view of the wisdom of outsourcing local government services or the performance of this particular contractor for this particular Council.

However, those with long memories or those who have attended the Law of Consultation course will recall that a campaigner called Mrs Nash went to the High Court and then to the Court of Appeal to argue that Barnet did not consult lawfully on this major change on the way it operated. In the event she lost – twice – on the technicality of being ‘out of time’ to obtain a Judicial Review. However, the Judge quite unusually examined the merits of the case (“just in case I am wrong” on the time issue) and found the Council’s attempts to consult quite unacceptable. Indeed, they were woeful.

So it is a nice surprise to see that the Council has, three years, later undertaken a review of the performance of the Capita Contract, and that it has included a public consultation as part of the process. The trouble is, we have great difficulty finding out much about this consultation. Whose views were asked? How was it publicised? Was it a well-designed questionnaire? We know it lasted three weeks during the summer holidays (suspiciously short) and that Councillors were shown (only) 4 written comments from Residents and a page of comments from a public meeting on the 25^th July. Otherwise nothing. The news story talk of a major improvement in residents’ satisfaction with ‘outward-facing’ customer services – up from 52% to 76% since the contract began. Quite apart from these being the kind of scores that ought to be wholly unacceptable to most self-respecting Councils, there is no evidence of the quality of the survey upon which it was based. How many respondents? How representative are they? And so forth …

Now it is to Barnet’s credit that it has sought residents’ views. A spokesperson now says that it was only undertaking an ‘engagement’ exercise, but this not is what the Council says on its Consultation Hub. The truth is that consultation that is not properly and transparently published is almost worthless and is a breach of best practice standards. We should take as much care when seeking people’s views after the event as we do before major policy changes are considered. But, then, Barnet consulted very poorly the first time around, and it clearly needs to be encouraged to do better.